Overview

In The History of Christianity in the United States, Chris Armstrong provides an introduction to the major movements, ideas, figures, and events in American church history, from colonization to recent decades. See how transplanted European churches took root, and American originals sprang up, over the course of five centuries of challenges and opportunities: early settlements, the expansion of the frontier, wars of independence and unification, slavery, immigration, intellectual challenges to the faith, and the new political and social realities of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Learn how the church reinvented and reaffirmed its central identity in the face of these social changes, and discover the implications of American church history for Christian life and ministry in today’s culture.

Learning Objectives

Upon successful completion you should be able to:

Describe the roots of American Puritanism in the English Reformation

Summarize major movements, ideas, figures, and events that affected the American church throughout its history

Evaluate how the church responded to unique social changes that arose in America

Discuss how Christians can live and minister more effectively in America and in the world today

About the Instructor

Dr. Chris Armstrongis the founding director of Opus: The Art of Work, a new institute at Wheaton College dedicated to understanding God’s call for work in the world. Prior to taking this post in 2014, he was director of Bethel Seminary’s Work with Purpose initiative while serving as a professor at Bethel. His training is in the field of American church history, and his areas of interest include religion and emotion; Christianity and literature; the holiness, Pentecostal, and charismatic movements; the Christ-and-culture conversation; and the “ancient–future” and “new monastic” movements within evangelicalism. He received his BA from St. Mary’s University in Nova Scotia (Canada), his MA from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, and his PhD from Duke University, where his research focused on the 19th-century holiness movement.

Dr. Armstrong wrote over 70 articles as the former managing editor of Christian History & Biography magazine, and he continues to contribute to Christian History & Biography and other publications, including Christianity Today and Leadership Journal. He has contributed chapters to Singing the Lord's Song in a Strange Land (edited by Mark A. Noll and Edith L. Blumhofer) and Portraits of a Generation: Early Pentecostal Leaders (edited by James R. Goff Jr. and Grant Wacker). Dr. Armstrong’s book, Patron Saints for Postmoderns, was published in 2009 by InterVarsity Press, and his forthcoming book, Getting Medieval: An Exploration with C. S. Lewis, will be published by Baker Academic.

Getting the most out of Mobile Ed

Logos Mobile Education is a highly effective cross-platform learning environment that integrates world class teaching with the powerful study tools and theological libraries available in Logos Bible Software. Every course provides links to additional resources and suggested readings that supplement the lecture material at the end of every transcript segment.

This course comes with an Activities resource that functions as a type of “workbook” for the course. This resource includes learning activities such as: places for you to respond to reflection questions, exercises that will challenge and show you how deepen your understanding of this course by using specific Logos tools and resources, tutorial videos on different features of Logos Bible Software, and links to relevant Logos guides and tools. A link to open the Activities resource is conveniently placed at the end of every segment.